If what's going on right now with kicker Eddy Piñeiro had happened this time a year ago, shortly after the San Francisco 49ers signed him cheap to replace waived kicker Jake Moody, Piñeiro, too, would have been given the boot and shown the door.
Perhaps the Niners would still like to do just that after their recently rewarded specialist has turned into a major special teams liability this season.
Piñeiro no longer has the luxury of being the darling favorite (not hard after the Moody days), and he's missed at least one field goal or extra-point attempt in each of San Francisco's seven games this season, including a rather ominous extra-point miss in Week 7 against the Atlanta Falcons that was called out in advance by Fox Sports color commentator Greg Olsen.
This stat, courtesy of the Associated Press' Josh Dubow, will sting:
#49ers K Eddy Pineiro's 7 missed kicks (4 PATs, 3 FGs) are most in NFL
— Josh Dubow (@JoshDubowAP) October 25, 2026
Most missed kicks in the league won't do any favors, and it certainly helps make sense of head coach Kyle Shanahan's postgame comments when asked about Piñero's future.
"We will probably discuss on the plane [home]," Shanahan said of Piñeiro after Sunday's loss.
Unfortunately, that discussion will have an important caveat the 49ers have to be regretting right now.
Eddy Piñeiro carries too much guaranteed money to be cut outright
It's easy for fans to simply say, "cut him" with regard to the Niners specialist. Rarely do they look at the contracts and guarantees before expressing such sentiments.
But San Francisco does look. It has to. After all, the 49ers gave Piñeiro a four-year, $17 million contract last offseason after what he managed to pull off for the bulk of 2025.
The problem? Well, $8 million of it was fully guaranteed, including a $4 million guarantee for 2027.
Ouch.
The 49ers already have $8 million in committed money to Piñeiro through this season, and if they cut him tomorrow, it'd also incur a $6 million dead-cap hit next year, too, with a nearly negative $3.3 million on the cap, according to Over the Cap.
Double-ouch.
Simply put, the Niners fell in love with a kicker who swiftly helped them forget the Moody debacle, and they rewarded Piñeiro handsomely, only to see him fail to deliver the following season.
Maybe this will finally be the lesson San Francisco learns: don't overpay (or overdraft) kickers. Ever.
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